No Pedestal Holds Us Up

Rather, a child’s chair bears
A measure beyond gauges.
Meanwhile, we’re surrounded
By the encrustations of past ages:

The marble, the oil, the stormy skies
Ravishing stormy landscapes.
These would quail under the weight
Of the age we’ve just escaped.

Stockings protect very little there.
But the hand bearing the present?
We don’t trust it either. Why should we?
The color is all wrong, unpleasant.

There is no center here,
No solid being, no settled mind,
Only a portion that cohered
Somewhere else in a different time.

Our pumps clack on the concrete.
Our chair scrapes like a turkey call.
These others call to us, too,
Chanting in their dead languages.